Described as a psychological literary anthology, this is a collection of writings by a number of authors on the subject of murder, and what prompts men and women to commit it. The collection has been chosen and introduced by the crime-writer Ruth Rendell, and endeavours to see into the mind of murderers, their thoughts and dreams, their murderous acts and their remorse, in fiction and in fact. The anthology draws on the works of celebrated writers, including Shakespeare, Sophocles, Tolstoy, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Edgar Allan Poe, John Banville, P.D. James, Patricia Highsmith, Sigmund Freud, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Norman Mailer, Rachel de Quieroz and Melanie Klein.